Some nights Sanmartí would also stay until late, secluded in his study. Mercedes tried to be there, but more than once he sent her home. Then, when we were left alone in the premises, he would come out of his office and wander up to my desk.
“You work too hard, Nuria. Work isn’t everything. One must also enjoy oneself. And you’re still young. But youth passes, you know, and we don’t always know how to make the most of it.”
He would sit on the edge of my table and stare at me. Sometimes he would stand behind me and remain there a couple of minutes. I could feel his foul breath on my hair. Other times he placed his hands on my shoulders.
“You’re tense. Relax.”
I trembled, I wanted to scream or run away and never return to that office, but I needed the job and its miserly pay. One night Sanmartí started on his routine massage and then he began to fondle me.
“One of these days you’re going to make me lose my head,” he moaned.
I leaped up, breaking free from his grasp, and ran toward the exit, dragging my coat and bag. Behind me, Sanmartí laughed. At the bottom of the staircase, I ran straight into a dark figure.
“What a pleasant surprise, Mrs. Moliner….”
Inspector Fumero gave me one of his snakelike smiles. “Don’t tell me you’re working for my good friend Sanmartí! Lucky girl. Just like me, he’s at the top of his game. So tell me, how’s your husband?”
I knew that my time was up. On the following day, a rumor spread around the office that Nuria Monfort was a dyke—since she remained immune to Don Pedro Sanmartí’s charms and his garlic breath—and that she was involved with Mercedes Pietro. More than one promising young man in the company swore that on a number of occasions he had seen that “couple of sluts” kissing in the filing room. That afternoon, on her way out, Mercedes asked me whether she could have a quick word with me. She could barely bring herself to look at me. We went to the corner café without exchanging a single word. There Mercedes told me what Sanmartí had told her: that he didn’t approve of our friendship, that the police had supplied him with a report on me, detailing my suspected communist past.
“I can’t afford to lose this job, Nuria. I need it to take care of my son….”
She broke down crying, burning with shame and humiliation.
“Don’t worry, Mercedes. I understand,” I said.
“This man, Fumero, he’s after you, Nuria. I don’t know what he has against you, but it shows in his face….”
“I know.”
THE FOLLOWING MONDAY, WHEN I ARRIVED AT WORK, I FOUND A skinny man with greased-back hair sitting at my desk. He introduced himself as Salvador Benades, the new copyeditor.
“And who are you?”
Not a single person in the office dared look at me or speak to me while I collected my things. On my way down the stairs, Mercedes ran after me and handed me an envelope with a wad of banknotes and some coins.
“Nearly everyone has contributed with whatever they could. Take it, please. Not for your sake, for ours.”
That night I went to the apartment on Ronda de San Antonio. Julián was waiting for me as usual, sitting in the dark. He’d written a poem for me, he said. It was the first thing he’d written in nine years. I wanted to read it, but I broke down in his arms. I told him everything, because I couldn’t hold back any longer. Julián listened to me without speaking, holding me and stroking my hair. It was the first time in years that I felt I could lean on him. I wanted to kiss him because I was sick with loneliness, but Julián had no lips or skin to offer me. I fell asleep in his arms, curled up on the bed in his room, a child’s bunk. When I woke up, Julián wasn’t there. At dawn I heard his footsteps on the roof terrace and pretended I was still asleep. Later that morning I heard the news on the radio without realizing its significance. A body had been found sitting on a bench on Paseo del Borne. The dead man had his hands crossed over his lap and was staring at the basilica of Santa María del Mar. A flock of pigeons pecking at his eyes caught the attention of a local resident, who alerted the police. The corpse had its neck broken. Mrs. Sanmartí identified it as her husband, Pedro Sanmartí Monegal. When the father-in-law of the deceased heard the news in his Bañolas nursing home, he gave thanks to heaven and told himself he could now die in peace.
·13·
JULIÁN ONCE WROTE THAT COINCIDENCES ARE THE SCARS OF FATE.
There are no coincidences, Daniel. We are puppets of our subconscious desires. For years I had wanted to believe that Julián was still the man I had fallen in love with, or what was left of him. I had wanted to believe that we would manage to keep going with sporadic bursts of misery and hope. I had wanted to believe that Laín Coubert had died and returned to the pages of a book. We humans are willing to believe anything rather than the truth.
Sanmartí’s murder opened my eyes. I realized that Laín Coubert was still alive, residing within Julián’s burned body and feeding on his memory. He had found out how to get in and out of the apartment on Ronda de San Antonio through a window that gave onto the inner courtyard, without having to force open the door I locked every time I left him there. I discovered that Laín Coubert, impersonating Julián, had been roaming through the city and visiting the old Aldaya mansion. I discovered that in his madness he had returned to the crypt and had broken the tombstones, that he had taken out the coffins of Penélope and his son. What have you done, Julián?
The police were waiting for me when I returned home, to interrogate me about the death of Sanmartí, the publisher. They took me to their headquarters, where, after five hours of waiting in a dark office, Fumero arrived, dressed in black, and offered me a cigarette.
“You and I could be good friends, Mrs. Moliner. My men tell me your husband isn’t home.”
“My husband left me. I don’t know where he is.”
He knocked me off the chair with a brutal slap in the face. I crawled into a corner, seized by fear. I didn’t dare look up. Fumero knelt beside me and grabbed me by my hair.
“Try to understand this, you fucking whore: I’m going to find him, and when I do, I’l
l kill you both. You first, so he can see you with your guts hanging out. And then him, once I’ve told him that the other tart he sent to the grave was his sister.”